9 pollsters free after disappearing in west Mexico

MORELIA, Mexico 
Nine Mexican polling company workers were released Wednesday, several days after they were apparently kidnapped in a western region plagued by drug-cartel violence.

The polling firm Parametria said its three employees were released Tuesday morning, hours after six working for Consulta Mitofsky were let go in the area near the city of Apatzingan where they disappeared.

No one has said who is responsible for seizing the nine. Michoacan state Public Safety Secretary Gen. Manuel Garcia Ruiz said the six who disappeared Saturday were simply left by their captors Wednesday on a roadside in an area being disputed between the La Familia and Knights Templar cartels.

"It could be the groups that are operating there ... because it is a zone of conflict," Garcia Ruiz said.

But he stressed that "none of the polling workers were beaten, no ransom demand was made for any of them," Garcia Ruiz said. "The most likely thing is that they were held to find out who sent them and what they really wanted."

Garcia Ruiz said the polling firms probably should have taken more security measures, like announcing their presence before arriving in the rural area.

"I think there was a failure there, a failure in the way the pollers acted or entered the area," he said, adding that security measures would be taken to ensure the state's Nov. 13 gubernatorial and local elections could be held safely.

Roy Campos, president of Consulta Mitofsky firm, said in an interview with MVS radio that the six from his firm, five men and a woman, are safe and with their families.

Parametria director Francisco Abundis said his three workers where not hurt by their captors but are shaken up.

"They wanted to know who they were, to make sure they were pollsters," Abundis said of the captors.

Abundis said polling companies are trying to determine how they can continue to work in Michoacan, where his company had been conducting surveys for a month and a half without any incidents until the kidnappings.

He said pollsters have been approached by armed men in other Mexican states and questioned but not kidnapped.

All had returned to Mexico City by midday Wednesday and were set to give statements to authorities.

The apparent abductions raised concerns that drug violence could interfere with the gubernatorial election and possibly Mexico's 2012 presidential race as well.

Abundis said all Mexican pollsters are now evaluating how to proceed with their work, given the dangers.

"Unfortunately we've run into a situation in which we don't know how we're going to be able to work," he said. "Our options are either an information blackout or to continue working in risky situations."

The polling firms have already decided that some parts of the country are too dangerous, including the northeastern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gulf and Zetas cartels have waged a bloody fight for turf.

"There are many places where we haven't been for some time," Abundis said. "The fact is that in this area, Apatzingan and La Cofradia, we had already been working there for a month or a month and half and nothing happened."